In preparing to write a review of jointpop’s new album, The Pothounds, to be released next month, I opened the file in which earlier reviews are kept and came across this review of what were then new albums. I know this was written for Caribbean Beat, what was then BWIA’s and is now Caribbean Airlines’ inflight magazine and I want to believe it appeared at Christmas-time, 2002; and I hope it is worth revisiting.

THE only debate about jointpop and Orange Sky, Trinidad’s leading rock bands, is which of them should be cast as the Beatles to the other’s Rolling Stones. Some declare jointpop the superior songwriters and, hence, the Trini Beatles; others call Sky the better band as a unit, which would make them the Trini Stones, much to the chagrin of jointpop lead singer, Gary Hector, who combined the names of Stones’ frontman, Mick Jagger, and musical driving force, guitarist Keith Richards, for his

The Tobago trip ended on a high note, with our last evening spent on a sunset cruise aboard the catamaran Island Girl, captained by the redoubtable Danny. (Their website, www.sailtobago.com is worth visiting by people in the TT Diaspora, just to remind yourself - and make yourself grind over - how amazing the waters are.)  Great “cutters”, as we say in Bim, were served alongside premium drinks on a three-hour sail along Tobago’s drop-dead gorgeous Caribbean coast; so much of it looks like a picture postcard, you could almost forget the catch-ass onshore most Caribbean folk face today. Amongst many highlights, perhaps the most outstanding feature, at least for me, was the music, supplied by one DJ BC, who walks everywhere with his iPod and

Along with other journalists/food writers, we have been in Tobago primarily for the Blue Food Festival, which took place at Bloody Bay on Sunday. I’ll be writing about it for Cre Ole 2013 issue, as usual - the magazine has covered the festival since 2009, the first report appearing in the 2010 edition - and ought to be able to produce a better story than before: the music from the DJ/perpetrator was kept to merely disturbing levels this year. Normally it is blasting at levels Led Zeppelin might complain about from the moment I arrive, usually before 9am, while things

The Blue Food Festival at Bloody Bay takes place tomorrow and I sit poolside at the Bacolet Beach Club under an ever-lightening sky, becoming correspondingly increasingly hopeful that the very bad weather associated with Almost-a-Tropical Storm Rafael we’ve endured for the last 48 hours will end within the next 12; a rain-drenched Bloody Bay is no picnic, as anyone who was at the last rain-spoiled one, five years ago, will tell you.

Nor was the flight from Barbados very early yesterday morning a piece of cake. People over the age of, say, 40, might remember that flying in bad weather used to be very scary. Better, bigger, smoother-flying planes and

Heading down to Slam 101.5FM for my second morning as guest co-host of the Alex Jordan Morning Show, Salt-Free Edition. Alex’s regular co-host, the very clever, very funny, Patrick Salt Bellamy, is on three weeks holiday and I’m standing in for him until Thursday morning, after which I head to Tobago for the Blue Food Festival. Yesterday, my first morning, I discovered I was literally standing in for Salt: the Slam studios have no chairs, and presenter’s “desks” are chest high. All the other radio station studios I’ve been into, whether as guest or host, I’ve sat in a chair. I guess it’s a way of raising the energy levels in youth stations, but, given the playlists - all 140 beats per minute stuff, except for the dancehall - it’s like wearing an orange hat with a plume with a sea green tie